Gyllenhaal Sizzles in Stormy ‘If There Is’: Jeremy Gerard

Annie Funke and Jake Gyllenhaal as a bullied overweight teen and her protective uncle in "If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet." The new play is running off-Broadway at the Laura Pels Theatre. Photographer: Joan Marcus/Boneau/Bryan-Brown via Bloomberg

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- It’s raining buckets onstage in
Nick Payne’s “If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet.”

No amount of slosh can dampen Jake Gyllenhaal’s U.S. stage
debut as a foul-mouth prodigal who wreaks havoc on his brother’s
troubled home. It’s a free-wheeling performance of high comic
energy and rude bombast unmatched since Mark Rylance masticated
the scenery in another British import, “Jerusalem.”

Like that play, “If There Is” has a ramshackle plot and a
lot on its mind, the disparate elements of which float
maddeningly in and out of view over the course of one long act.

Gyllenhaal plays Terry, the smart but lethally unfocused
boy-man (he’s not yet 30) who arrives unannounced at the
suburban British home of his older brother George, an
environmental activist; Fiona, George’s neglected schoolteacher
wife, and Anna, their fat 15-year-old daughter, a bully target
with an understandably morose disposition.

When he arrives, Anna (Annie Funke, fearless and arresting)
has just been suspended from school for head-butting one of her
tormentors. Meeting her in the kitchen after a long absence, the
uncle launches into the tale of a recent sexual encounter,
followed by a heartfelt if somewhat poorly timed peroration on
the comparative desirability of “fat birds” (pro) versus
“skinny birds” (con).

Any Day

Any day now, Terry assures her, Anna will wake up and
realize she’s beautiful. She’s not buying it, but a complicated,
tenuous bond between them grows as her parents (Brian F. O’Byrne
and Michelle Gomez, both very fine) -- entertainingly, if less
persuasively, drawn -- spin further out in their own orbits.

The play’s two constants are the sense of danger Terry adds
to the family mix, and the theme of destruction that weaves
parlously between the family and George’s doomsday prophesizing.
They’re embodied by Beowulf Boritt’s drenching set, which begins
as a pile of furniture at center stage.

The characters take out chunks of it -- a desk, a bed, a
couch -- for a given scene before tossing, kicking or otherwise
launching it into the trough of water that extends across the
stage lip. (You really don’t want to be sitting in the first few
rows). These people wreck everything in sight.

The statement seems to be that our emotional imprint is as
fraught and damning as our carbon footprint. “If There Is I
Haven’t Found It Yet” ends with a soggy coup-de-theatre that
drives this point home.

Like Anna, I’m not necessarily buying it. Getting there, on
the other hand, has been one long strange trip.